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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Tituba, “Dark Eve” In The Origins Of The American Myth: The Subject Of History And Writing About Salem, Junghyun Hwang Feb 2022

Tituba, “Dark Eve” In The Origins Of The American Myth: The Subject Of History And Writing About Salem, Junghyun Hwang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Recasting the Salem witchcraft trials in light of Walter Benjamin’s theses on historiography, this paper revisits the question of history by examining ways in which Tituba is dis/con-figured as the subject of American history in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Both stories of persecution revolve around the figure of Tituba, a slave from the Caribbean to whom the beginning of the witch trials is attributed, as the nodal point of different modes of representing the Salem history. The telos in Miller’s drama coincides with the subject-formation of Proctor as the legitimate …


Hanay Geiogamah’S Body Indian And Foghorn As “Plays With A Purpose”, Danica Čerče Mar 2021

Hanay Geiogamah’S Body Indian And Foghorn As “Plays With A Purpose”, Danica Čerče

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Hanay Geiogamah’s Body Indian and Foghorn as ‘Plays with a Purpose,’” written against the backdrop of critical whiteness studies, Danica Čerče discusses how Geiogamah’s theatrical rhetoric intervenes in the assumptions about whiteness as a static, privilege-granting category and system of dominance. By focusing on various techniques and strategies mobilized to define and affirm Native Americans’ authentic rather than imposed identities, the article shows that humor is one of the prime textual devices in Geiogamah’s plays to renegotiate what Walter Mignolo calls “the racist structure of power.”


Problems With Perceptual And Cognitive Idiosyncrasies In Li Wenjun’S Translation Of The Benjy Section Of Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury, Aaron L. Moore Mar 2021

Problems With Perceptual And Cognitive Idiosyncrasies In Li Wenjun’S Translation Of The Benjy Section Of Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury, Aaron L. Moore

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Problems with Perceptual and Cognitive Idiosyncrasies in Li Wenjun’s Translation of the Benjy Section of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury,” Aaron Lee Moore conducts a close explication of a 2014 English-Chinese edition of part of The Sound and the Fury. Li Wenjun’s translation of the Benjy section of The Sound and the Fury is certainly admirable in its graceful rendering of Faulkner’s complex, idiosyncratic prose style into accessible Chinese—and particularly laudable in its meticulous tracking of the a-chronological sequence of Benjy’s stream of consciousness narrative. However, problems arise in the translation due to an …


The Suffering Joker And The Cruel Joke: Nabokov's And Bellow's Dark Laughter, Gerald David Naughton, Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton Sep 2019

The Suffering Joker And The Cruel Joke: Nabokov's And Bellow's Dark Laughter, Gerald David Naughton, Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article interrogates the interrelationship between cruelty, suffering, and laughter in novels by Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, positing an affective reading of how bodies that suffer come to produce laughter as a confounding, unexpected, and at times inappropriate readerly affect. Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark and Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King both explore suffering as a form of excessive somatic cruelty inflicted on protagonists who, in experiencing such punishment, engender a strange, troubling, and potentially transformative form of laughter. In order to bring together a discussion of the body, suffering, cruelty, and laughter in Nabokov and Bellow, the essay …


Authorship In Burroughs's Red Night Trilogy And Bowles's Translation Of Moroccan Storytellers, Benjamin J. Heal Dec 2016

Authorship In Burroughs's Red Night Trilogy And Bowles's Translation Of Moroccan Storytellers, Benjamin J. Heal

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Authorship in Burroughs's Red Night Trilogy and Bowles's Translation of Moroccan Storytellers" Benjamin J. Heal discusses Paul Bowles's and William S. Burroughs's varying interrogation of the constructed nature of authorship. In his study Heal focuses on the publication history of Burroughs's Cities of the Red Night (1981), which was written with considerable collaborative influence and Bowles's translation of illiterate Moroccan storytellers, where his influence over the production and editing of the texts is blurred as are the roles of author and translator. Through an examination of Bowles's and Burroughs's authorship strategies in parallel with an explication of …


Burroughs's Folios As An Archival Machine For Artistic Creation, Tomasz D. Stompor Dec 2016

Burroughs's Folios As An Archival Machine For Artistic Creation, Tomasz D. Stompor

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Burroughs's Folios as an Archival Machine for Artistic Creation" Tomasz D. Stompor discusses the significance of archival material as a scholarly resource for the analysis of William S. Burroughs's cut-up experiments. Stompor retraces the history of the author's filing system as both a referential repository and a device for documentation and investigates its function as an eperimental machine for the production of cut-up texts and layouts


Literary Creolization In Layachi's A Life Full Of Holes, Maarten Van Gageldonk Dec 2016

Literary Creolization In Layachi's A Life Full Of Holes, Maarten Van Gageldonk

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literary Creolization in Layachi's A Life Full of Holes" Maarten van Gageldonk discusses the publication of Larbi Layachi's 1964 book by Grove Press based on a transcription and translation by Paul Bowles. Both Bowles and the editors at Grove Press made numerous alterations to the content and form of Layachi's tales in order to make them more accessible for readers. In the process, Layachi's book became a "cultural creole" (Hannerz). Drawing on archival materials from the Grove Press Records housed at Syracuse University, van Gageldonk examines how in its published form A Life Full of Holes …


The Impact Of Burroughs's Naked Lunch On Chester's The Exquisite Corpse, Jaap Van Der Bent Dec 2016

The Impact Of Burroughs's Naked Lunch On Chester's The Exquisite Corpse, Jaap Van Der Bent

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Impact of Burroughs's Naked Lunch on Chester's The Exquisite Corpse" Jaap van der Bent posits that although Alfred Chester was critical of most Beat writing, in Tangier in the early 1960s he associated not only with Paul Bowles, but also with William S. Burroughs. Van der Bent argues that The Exquisite Corpse, the experimental novel Chester wrote in Tangier, shows the influence of the city's geography and especially the content and form of Burroughs's Naked Lunch.


Burroughs's Postcolonial Visions In The Yage Letters, Melanie Keomany Dec 2016

Burroughs's Postcolonial Visions In The Yage Letters, Melanie Keomany

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Burroughs's Postcolonial Visions in The Yage Letters" Melanie Keomany discusses the contents of William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg's The Yage Letters which could be dismissed as openly bigoted and racist. Keomany posits that the text reveals valuable connections between the colonial expansion of the eighteenth century and 1950s USA and Latin America. By re-shaping Burroughs's lived experiences in the Amazon into a text where the narrator William Lee mimics sardonically and parodically the colonial scientific explorer, The Yage Letters provides valuable insight into the complex postcolonial context of the mid-twentieth century.


Ginsberg's Translations Of Apollinaire And Genet In The Development Of His Poetics Of "Open Secrecy", Véronique Lane Dec 2016

Ginsberg's Translations Of Apollinaire And Genet In The Development Of His Poetics Of "Open Secrecy", Véronique Lane

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Ginsberg's Translations of Apollinaire and Genet in the Development of his Poetics of 'Open Secrecy'" Véronique Lane analyzes the extent to which the journals, letters and poems of Allen Ginsberg are marked by constant reference to literary models that give just as much weight to French as to American writers. Focusing on his long involvement with Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Genet's works, Lane argues that Ginsberg meticulously constructed the genealogy of his poetry through a threefold strategy of literary quotation, translation and encryption. Uncovering this strategy through analysis of "Howl," "At Apollinaire's Grave," and "Death to Van …


Utopia In Progress In Di Prima's Revolutionary Letters, Estíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo Dec 2016

Utopia In Progress In Di Prima's Revolutionary Letters, Estíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Utopia in Progress in di Prima's Revolutionary Letters" Estíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo describes Diane di Prima's Revolutionary Letters (1971) within the context of social transformation and spatiality studies. In the context of the socio-political revolt and utopian revival of the 1970s, di Prima's utopia is grounded in reality and in progress; and it needs people's help and strength to be attained. In the first section of the article Pinedo analyzes a group of letters which serve as "tips" or a "how-to" guide to prepare for a revolution and in the second part she considers letters in which glimpses …


The Beat "Pad", Heike Mlakar Dec 2016

The Beat "Pad", Heike Mlakar

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Beat 'Pad'" Heike Mlakar analyzes the importance of Joan Vollmer's and Hettie Jones's Manhattan apartments as centers for the upcoming avant-garde movement of the time in order to understand the meaning of "home" in postwar bohemianism in general and specifically for female Beats. In sensationalized late 1950s films and in print media, the Beats were associated with low-rent Beat "pads" in poor urban areas, in which wild all-night parties were held—sites of drug use, destitution, and sexual promiscuity. Both Vollmer and Jones contributed greatly to the formation of the Beat Generation by providing the perfect setting …


Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke Dec 2016

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Delillo's Falling Man And The Trouble With Sympathy In Narratives Of Terrorism, Jessica Mcdonald Sep 2016

Delillo's Falling Man And The Trouble With Sympathy In Narratives Of Terrorism, Jessica Mcdonald

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "DeLillo's Falling Man and the Trouble with Sympathy in Narratives of Terrorism" Jessica McDonald discusses the ways Don DeLillo's characterization of a 9/11 terrorist elicits reader sympathy in his 2007 novel Falling Man. McDonald argues that introducing sympathy into narratives of terrorism undermines attempts to understand the contextual issues out of which terrorism arises even if the rhetoric of sympathy may seem to foster a sense of "fellow-feeling" that makes acts of political protest and resistance more accessible to broader publics.


Narrative Ethics And Alterity In Adichie's Novel Americanah, Nora Berning Dec 2015

Narrative Ethics And Alterity In Adichie's Novel Americanah, Nora Berning

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Narrative Ethics and Alterity in Adichie's Novel Americanah" Nora Berning analyses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel through the lens of a narrative ethics of alterity. Focusing on the notion of alterity, Berning argues that a specific turn-of-the-century ethics emerges in contemporary fictions of migration in general and in intercultural novels in particular. An ethical genre in its own right, such twenty-first century fictions as Americanah generate a particular kind of ethical knowledge that revolves around questions of identity and alterity and around individual and collective perceptions of self and other. By addressing the interplay of "the ethics …


Perspectives Of Ethical Identity In Ng's Steer Toward Rock And Jen's Mona In The Promised Land, Hui Su Dec 2015

Perspectives Of Ethical Identity In Ng's Steer Toward Rock And Jen's Mona In The Promised Land, Hui Su

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Perspectives of Ethical Identity in Ng's Steer toward Rock and Jen's Mona in the Promised Land" Hui Su examines Fae Myenne Ng's and Gish Jen's novels. In the novels, the protagonists make different decisions: in Steer Toward Rock Jack after displacement in China adopts US-American identity and in Mona in the Promised Land Mona, a second generation Chinese American, selects Jewish identity. Owing to their different situations, the two protagonists reflect challenges of identity building in the case of the "Other" in US-American culture and society. Su argues that Ng and Jen, although varying in their …


Mccarthy's The Road And Ethical Choice In A Post-Apocalyptic World, Jingjing Guo Dec 2015

Mccarthy's The Road And Ethical Choice In A Post-Apocalyptic World, Jingjing Guo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "McCarthy's The Road and Ethical Choice in a Post-Apocalyptic World" Jingjing Guo analyses ethical choice and its implications in McCarthy's The Road. After examining the deterioration of the ethical context and the prevalence of evil reflected in cannibalism, Guo highlights the father's ethical choice and dilemma. Different from most others, the father chooses to keep alive to protect his son, and to stay man and stay good in a physically devastated and morally bankrupted world. Through discussing the meaning of the metaphor "fire" and "carrying the fire," Guo further explores the significance of the father's choice …


Mapping Memory In Tran’S Vietnamerica, Mary A. Goodwin Sep 2015

Mapping Memory In Tran’S Vietnamerica, Mary A. Goodwin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Mapping Memory in Tran's Vietnamerica" Mary Goodwin explores the use of maps, landscape paintings, and other topographic images in Gia-Bao Tran's graphic memoir chronicling the "postmemory" of the US-American son of wartime refugees. Tran's family immigrated to the United States in 1975 following the fall of Saigon. Tran knew nothing of his parents' hardships and struggle to escape Vietnam until he returned for relatives' funerals in his 20s. Similar to Spiegelman's Maus, Vietnamerica is a mixed-media memoir containing photographs, maps, and comics in various styles. Following Hirsch's lead in demonstrating the special historical value of photographs …


Electronic Poetry And The Importance Of Digital Repository, Manuel Brito Dec 2014

Electronic Poetry And The Importance Of Digital Repository, Manuel Brito

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Electronic Poetry and the Importance of Digital Repository" Manuel Brito analyzes selected early digital repositories of electronic poetry. In addition to issues concerning efficiency and discursive practice, Brito's discusses the objectives, contents, and the funding of digital repositories. Brito argues that digital repositories promote poetry, enable networking and quick publishing of innovative poetry, they intensify the reading experience, and make a readership possible that is larger than that of print poetry. Networking, interaction, and web-based communication intensify the writing and reading experience while new modes of discourse are emerging continually. Not just passive consumerism promoted by an …


Race, Slavery, And The Re-Evaluation Of The T'Ang Canon, Gregory E. Rutledge Dec 2014

Race, Slavery, And The Re-Evaluation Of The T'Ang Canon, Gregory E. Rutledge

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Race, Slavery, and the Revaluation of the T'ang Canon" Gregory E. Rutledge re-evaluates—from the purview of African Diaspora literary studies—historiography that considers the place of East African slave lore in T'ang Dynasty fiction. Julie Wilensky's "The Magical Kunlun and 'Devil Slaves': Chinese Perceptions of Dark-skinned People and Africa before 1500" (2002), a revision of Chang Hsing-lang's "The Importation of Negro Slaves to China Under the T'ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907)" (1930), is pivotal since it occupies the nexus between European-American, East-Asian, and African-Diasporic canons and policies. Rutledge situates Wilensky's and Chang's works in the context of Edward W. …


Philip Roth, Henry Roth And The History Of The Jews, Timothy Parrish Jun 2014

Philip Roth, Henry Roth And The History Of The Jews, Timothy Parrish

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Philip Roth, Henry Roth and the History of the Jews" Timothy Parrish argues that while Roth's status as a Jewish American writer has been a pressing issue since his career began and that while in recent scholarship Roth's achievement as a US-American writer is stressed, the durability of Roth's work depends more on its implied submission to a Jewish tradition. From "The Conversion of the Jews" (1959) to Nemesis (2010), his characters challenge endlessly the ethical and moral constructs of their Jewish community to acknowledge the fact that they exist inside of it. One might choose any …


About Paternal Voices In Adoption Narratives, Fu-Jen Chen Mar 2014

About Paternal Voices In Adoption Narratives, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "About Paternal Voices in Adoption Narratives" Fu-jen Chen examines the emerging voices of fathers in adoption discourse. Breaking the reticence and challenging the stereotypical profile of birth fathers and the father overall, birth fathers in narratives resort to essentialism or victimhood, a cultural imagination in adoption discourse. Further, Chen examines adoption narratives by adoptive fathers arguing that their reluctance to call for a father-to-father relationship — either rivalry or alliance — indicates a sign of disavowal of both subjective splitness and the structural deadlock. Chen argues that in paternal adoption narratives writing does not emerge as a …


Mcsweeney's And The Challenges Of The Marketplace For Independent Publishing, Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, Pieter Vermeulen Dec 2013

Mcsweeney's And The Challenges Of The Marketplace For Independent Publishing, Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, Pieter Vermeulen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "McSweeney's and the Challenges of the Marketplace for Independent Publishing" Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen argue that the artistic projects of the US-American author, activist, and editor Dave Eggers are marked by a tension between the desire for independence and the demands of brand-building. The article offers a close analysis of the materiality and paratexts of one particular issue of McSweeney's, the literary magazine of which Eggers is the founding editor. Both the content and the apologetically aggressive tone of Eggers's editorial statements betray a deep unease with the inability to inhabit a …